Rave Run: Parys Mountain, Wales

The experience: Sitting a mile south-west of the Anglesey port of Amlwch is the 147m peak of Parys Mountain, surely one of the UK’s most remarkable landscapes.

The mountain has been extensively mined through the centuries for its rich deposits of copper and iron ore, the remains of which are repsonsible for the striking colouration of the landscape.

Parys Mountain has full public access and Flaherty, a mountain leader and documentary film-maker, is pictured here running along the relatively flat paths that weave through the rocky terrain.

Facts and history:

- Parys Mountain is one of only three sites in Wales that have evidence of copper mining during the Bronze and Roman Ages.

- Amlwch Port was the world’s most important exporter of metal and base for great shipbuilding in the 1800s.

- The huge opencast is still an awesome sight, resembling a Martian landscape as the surrounding waste tips and colourful soils are red-coloured and contain little or no vegetation because of high levels of copper, lead and sulphur.

- Copper mined here helped fire the Industrial revolution and even to plate Lord Nelson’s flagship, The Victory, at the battle of Trafalgar.

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